indonesia, then and now - ari.nus.edu.sg · reformasi at 20: indonesia, then and now 14 may 2018 |...

Indonesia, Then and Now 14 MAY 2018

AS8 Level 4, ARI Seminar Room, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119260

REFORMASI AT 20: INDONESIA, THEN A ND NOW 14 May 2018 | AS8 Level 4, ARI Seminar Room, National University of Singapore

Updated on 3/5/2018

On 21 May 1998, students who occupied the Parliament Building in Jakarta cheered with joy upon hearing the resignation of President Suharto. Some celebrated by soaking themselves in the water fountain of the Parliament complex. More than three decades of Suharto’s dictatorship have seen Indonesia’s economy growing through immersion in the global market, resource extraction, crony capitalism and developmentalist obsession, but not without repression of opposition, oppression of freedom of speech, forced occupation of resource-rich areas, controlled propaganda-filled national media and military domination amidst social and political inequalities across Indonesia. Social movements against the authoritarian regime had existed for more than a decade before the ‘Smiling General’’s eventual resignation, resulting in suppressions, political kidnapping, and disappearance of activists, but finally the 1997 economic crisis provided a window of opportunity for a bigger mobilization, leading to the historical Reformasi moment and era. May 2018 marks two decades of Reformasi, through which Indonesia had had many changes. Presidents are now directly elected, and so are provincial governors, regents and city mayors. City governments currently have the autonomy to manage issues, to plan their budgets and to make decisions over local developments. Public universities are financially restructured through a series of government regulations. The Constitution was amended and now includes an expanded chapter on human rights and the establishment of the Constitutional Court. Civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations proliferated. However, not everything has changed since 1998. Human rights violations remain unresolved, repressive actions in the name of development continues, and some prominent political and economic actors from the Suharto era remain powerful. Moreover, new challenges arise as results of old problems with new constellations, among which are the spread of media access and hoax, segregations and politicized identities, and racketeering regimes in various scales. This one-day symposium brings together Indonesia scholars from various disciplines to reflect on Indonesia’s Reformasi, two decades on. Discussions will address the following questions: • What were the expectations of Reformasi? • What have been the changes in Indonesia after Reformasi? How have the outcomes met/not meet

the expectations? • Why were some expectations fulfilled and some not? Besides examining issues within their own research, this event also provides a platform for discussion about Indonesian studies after Reformasi, which will cover the current situation, challenges, and how to move forward. CONVENORS Assoc. Prof. Itty Abraham Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore Dr. Rita Padawangi Singapore University of Social Sciences (Cover picture: International Human Rights Day demonstration, Jakarta 10 December 2007, by Rita Padawangi)


Updated on 3/5/2018

14 MAY 2018 (MONDAY)

09:15 – 09:30 REGISTRATION

09:30 – 09:45 WELCOME & INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

09:30 Itty Abraham | National University of Singapore

Rita Padawangi | Singapore University of Social Sciences

09:45 – 11:00 PANEL 1: DEMOCRACY

Chairperson Deasy Simandjuntak | ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

09:45 Merlyna Lim

Carleton University, Canada

#WeHaveNeverBeenReformed: 20 Years of Digital Media and Activism in the Post-Reformasi Indonesia

10:05 Jamie S. Davidson

National University of Singapore

Indonesia: Twenty Years of Democracy

10:25 QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

11:00 – 11:30 TEA BREAK

11:30 – 13:00 PANEL 2: REVISITING HISTORY

Chairperson Goh Beng Lan | National University of Singapore

11:30 Hilmar Farid

Ministry of Education and Culture, Indonesia

Historiography as Hagiography: A Note on the Spiritual Turn in Recent Indonesian Historiography

11:50 Adrian Perkasa

Universitas Airlangga

Pelurusan Sejarah atau Perspektif Baru? / Rectifying History or New Perspective? The Development of Historiography and Historical Discourses in Post-Reformasi Indonesia

12:10 Douglas Anton Kammen

National University of Singapore Polarising Indonesia


13:00 – 14:00 LUNCH


Updated on 3/5/2018

14:00 – 15:30 PANEL 3: CONTEMPORARY INDONESIA

Chairperson Michelle Ann Miller | National University of Singapore

14:00 Evi Mariani Sofian

The Jakarta Post

Indonesian Press: Without Fear or Favor?

14:20 Rini Astuti

National University of Singapore

Forest-land Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia: Challenging or Consolidating Environmental Injustice?

14:40 Sumit Mandal

University of Nottingham Malaysia

Racialised Representations: What Becomes Highlighted and What Obscured?


15:30 – 16:00 TEA BREAK

16:00 – 17:30 PANEL 4: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Chairperson Itty Abraham | National University of Singapore

16:00 Amalinda Savirani

Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia

From Factory to Parliament Building? Indonesian Labour Movement 20 Years After Reformasi

16:20 Dédé Oetomo

Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia

The Indonesian LGBTIQ Movement and Reformasi: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back?

16:40 Rita Padawangi

Singapore University of Social Sciences

Indonesia’s Urban Social Movements


17:30 – 18:00 REVISITING INDONESIAN STUDIES

17:30 Itty Abraham | National University of Singapore

Rita Padawangi | Singapore University of Social Sciences

18:00 END OF SYMPOSIUM


Updated on 3/5/2018

LIST OF SPEAKERS & CHAIRPERSONS

Itty Abraham specializes in international relations and science and technology studies. For his PhD dissertation, he compared the experiences of India and Brazil with respect to the development of indigenous high technologies. He has worked at the Social Science Research Council, East West Center, George Washington University and The University of Texas at Austin, where he was Director of the South Asia Institute. He moved to NUS in 2012 and is currently head of the Dept. of Southeast Asian Studies. He has written about nuclear power, foreign policy, geopolitics, and digital technologies. His most recent article is “The Andamans as a ‘sea of islands’: Reconnecting old geographies through poaching,” in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 19, 1, 2018. Rini Astuti is a Research Fellow with Inter-Asia Engagements Cluster at the Asia Research Institute (ARI). She is in a research collaboration between ARI and the NUS Department of Geography at on the sustainable governance of transboundary environmental commons in Southeast Asia. Her role is to examine the emerging peatland governance apparatuses in the Southeast Asia region (Indonesia in particular) and its implications for the palm oil and pulpwood sectors both on the large scale and for smallholder plantations. Her research interest is in the multi-layered socio-environmental conflicts underlying peatland governance, management and degradation, tracing local community relationships with other actors at different scales. Prior to joining ARI, she was a Research Fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore). Jamie S. Davidson is Associate Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. His books and edited volumes on Indonesia include “The Revival of Tradition in Indonesian Politics” (2007); “From Rebellion to Riots” (2008); “Indonesia’s Changing Political Economy” (2015); and “Indonesia: Twenty Years of Democracy” (forthcoming). Presently he remains as perplexed by Indonesia as he was the day he began studying the country over twenty years ago. Hilmar Farid is a historian and cultural activist. In the 1990s he was active in the pro-democracy movement. He is a founding member of Jaringan Kerja Budaya, a collective of artists and cultural workers in the early 1990s, and also the Institute of Indonesian Social History in 2000. He taught history and cultural studies at the Jakarta Arts Institute and University of Indonesia for several years. He received his PhD from the National University of Singapore and wrote his thesis on Pramoedya Ananta Toer and the politics of decolonization in Indonesia. He has been an active member of the Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives (ARENA) and the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society. On 31 December 2015, after a long selection process, he was appointed as the Director General for Culture at the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia. Douglas Kammen is Associate Professor at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He research and teaching focuses on the politics and history of Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and East Timor. He is particularly interested in issues of political violence, social movements, collective action and human rights. Merlyna Lim is a Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society with the School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University. Lim is also the Director and Founder of the Alternative Global Network (ALiGN) Media Lab. Lim’s research and teaching interests revolve around socio-political implications of media and technology, in relations to globalization, democratization, and social change. Using empirical evidence from Southeast Asia and the Middle East, Lim’s current research attempts to analyze social movements spatially and offers an in-depth understanding of the relationship


Updated on 3/5/2018

between movements, urban space and digital media. In 2016, Lim is elected the member of the Royal Society of Canada's New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. Sumit Mandal is a historian interested in the transregional architecture of Asian societies. His research has focused primarily on Muslim societies in the Malay world — in relation to the Indian Ocean — as well as contemporary Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Before joining the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus in 2015, he worked at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and held fellowships at New York University and Kyoto University. With Ariel Heryanto, he co-edited the volume Challenging Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia: Comparing Indonesia and Malaysia (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003) which was based on research conducted during the Reformasi years. His most recent publication is Becoming Arab: Creole Histories and Modern Identity in the Malay World (Cambridge, 2018). Evi Mariani Sofian is a Managing Editor at The Jakarta Post, where she has worked since 2002. Her interests range from urban issues, gender, environment, human rights and democracy. In April 2017 she left the Post to help launch The Conversation Indonesia, an online media bridging the academia with the public. She returned to the Post in March this year. Evi finished her bachelor’s degree at Universitas Gadjah Mada and her master’s at Universiteit van Amsterdam. She was a Hubert Humphrey Fellow from 2011-2012 at University of Maryland. She is the co-founder of Archiving Urban Kampung, a volunteer collective aiming at providing a platform for the underrepresented especially in cities. Dédé Oetomo is a Founder and Trustee of GAYa NUSANTARA Foundation (www.gayanusantara.or.id) in Surabaya, Indonesia. He currently also chairs the Regional Advisory Group of the Asia-Pacific Coalition on Male Sexual Health (www.apcom.org), as well as a member of the Advisory Council of the Coalition on Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (www.csbronline.org). He received his PhD in linguistics and Southeast Asian studies at Cornell University in 1984. He is an adjunct lecturer in gender and sexuality at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences and the Faculty of Humanities at Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya. Rita Padawangi is Senior Lecturer at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. Previously, she was Senior Research Fellow of the Asian Urbanisms cluster at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore (NUS). She received her PhD in sociology from Loyola University Chicago, where she was also a Fulbright Scholar for her master of arts studies. She holds a bachelor of architecture degree from the Parahyangan Catholic University. Her research interests include the sociology of architecture and participatory urban development. She is a member of the collaborative Southeast Asia Neighborhoods Network (SEANNET), a four-year initiative for urban studies research, teaching and dissemination through the prism of the neighborhood, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation through the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS). Adrian Perkasa is a lecturer in Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Airlangga. He received his MA degree in History from Universitas Gadjah Mada and dual bachelor degrees in History and International Relations from Airlangga. His MA thesis “Orang–Orang Tionghoa dan Islam di Majapahit/ Chinese Muslim in Majapahit” was published as a book by Penerbit Ombak in 2012. He participated in the Urban Conservation Network in Asia and its Future Symposium in Penang that led to the establishment of the Asian Heritage Network in 2013. Currently he is researching history and heritage conservation in Surabaya and East Java.


Updated on 3/5/2018

Amalinda Savirani is a lecturer at Department of Politics and Government, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. Her research interest is on social movement such as urban politics, and labor politics, particularly their linkages to political representative institutions. She was a visiting fellow at Department of Politics and Social Change, Australian National University, Australia (2017-2018). Her recent publication is “Adversarial Linkage: The Urban Poor and Electoral Politics in Jakarta”, in Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs (co-author with Edward Aspinall, 2018), “Juggling while claiming rights: Urban poor community claiming rights in North Jakarta”, in Stokke, K, and Hiariej, E (eds) Popular Citizenship in Indonesia (2017), and together with Olle Törnquist, she edited a book titled “Reclaiming the state: overcoming problems of democracy in post-Soeharto Indonesia“ (2015). Her paper on labor movement titled "From labor activists to aspiring politicians: the case of labor activists in Bekasi, Indonesia" will be presented at ASAA Conference July 2018. Deasy Simandjuntak is a political anthropologist and Visiting Fellow at ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute. Her main interests are patronage democracy, identity-politics and local politics in Indonesia. She received her PhD in 2010 at the University of Amsterdam, and was post-doctoral fellow at Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) Leiden, Van Vollenhoven Institute, Leiden University (2010-2014) and Freiburg University (2011). Her publications include “Gifts and Promises: Patronage Democracy in a Decentralized Indonesia”, European Journal of East Asian Studies 2012; “Milk-Coffee at 10 AM: Encountering the State through Pilkada in North Sumatra” in Van Klinken and Barker, State of Authority: The State in Society in Indonesia 2009; and “Doing Anthropological Fieldwork with Southeast-Asian Characteristics? Identity and Adaptation in the Field” (with M. Haug), in Huotari et al, Methodology and Research Practice in Southeast Asian Studies 2014.

indonesia, then and now - ari.nus.edu.sg · reformasi at 20: indonesia, then and now 14 may 2018 |...

Documents